We are pleased to invite you to HEARD’s April 2024 webinar which will be presented by our longstanding colleague, Professor Dick Durevall, from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. His webinar title is ‘Aid and Child Health: A Disaggregated Analysis of the Effects of Aid on Impaired Growth’.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Dick Durevall is a Professor in Development Economics at the University of Gothenburg. His research interests include HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa, intimate partner violence, food markets, development macroeconomics, and international economics.

ABOUT THE WEBINAR

Motivated by a recent setback in the fight against child malnutrition, this study explores whether aid projects help reduce stunting or impaired growth among children close to project sites. Focusing on Malawi, a country with a very high stunting prevalence for which we have access to geo-referenced data on aid projects from a broad range of donors, we geographically match spatial data on 778 aid project sites of 22 different donors with anthropometric and background data on 26,604 children under the age of 5. The detailed data allows for a disaggregated analysis comparing local aid impacts by types of aid, donor- and recipient groups. To identify the effect of aid, we rely on spatial and temporal variation in aid project coverage and survey rollout, coupled with variation in the child’s age at aid exposure. The empirical results consistently indicate a positive impact of early-life aid exposure on child growth. The positive treatment effect, which is most consistent for children born 0-4 years after project start, is seemingly driven primarily by multilateral- and social sector aid. The analysis of the mechanisms at work is still in progress but preliminary findings indicate that mother’s education, household wealth and sanitation are the most important ones.

ZOOM INVITATION INFORMATION

Date: 17th of April

Time: 11:00-12:00

Zoom: https://ukzn.zoom.us/j/6839279256?pwd=dnozYXJ4OFI5WXg1by81OXM3MWhhUT09&omn=94379303897

Meeting ID: 683 927 9256

Passcode: 65234